For a few hours in the late summer of 2023, the ATR Villa in Eltville became a concert hall, a recording studio and the setting for a live LP production. The protagonists: the De-Phazz Jazz Quartet feat. At the mixing desk: the „Sommelier du Son“ aka Dirk Sommer. The goal: a purely analogue De-Phazz live LP produced in autumn 2023. The result: an intimate, directly captured celebration for vinyl fans and friends of cultivated lounge jazz. With a crystal-clear, dynamic sound and audible enjoyment of making music.

To write about the importance of De-Phazz for sophisticated electronic music since the turn of the millennium would be comparable to carrying surfboards into California; seeing as everybody who has had a cocktail in a lounge in Berlin, Miami, or Ibiza since the year 1997 is familiar with this band from Heidelberg – be it for hits such as `The Mambo Craze` or `No Jive` (with over 11 million streams on Spotify thus far), for movies, advertisements and television, or countless concerts that the band has played worldwide in the past quarter of a century.

Lesser known is, however, who the conceptual mastermind behind Germanies most important organic electronic music export is. This is most likely to change soon, because De-Phazz` gifted collage artist, sample juggler and sound designer is presenting his magnum opus with `Pit Sounds`. Even though the title is, of course, meant as an expression of pure self-irony, the album does stand up to the cheeky reference to the Beach Boys classic `Pet Sounds`. In its very own unique way, `Pit Sounds` is a masterpiece in the truest sense of the word-craftmanship developed to the highest form of perfection. `There is this well-known sentence by Matthew Herbert saying that he created every single note on his album`, Baumgartner quotes a famous British colleague in production, `whereas I say: Not a single note is created by me!` A clear description of Peter Scissorhands`, as he presents himself in a black and white photo collage on the back of the album `Pit Sounds`, process. Like a miner, Baumgartner makes his way through the complex tunnel system of his seemingly endless collection of sounds from old soul, explanations of the economic miracle of the 50’s and obscure song material from all over the world searching for precious metals. After striking gold, he carefully removes it from its previous context, mills, forges, turns and polishes it until he has placed it in a completely unexpected new context with a cryptic smile. `I am best at putting things together that don’t belong together. And I do this joyously, sometimes it works, sometimes it goes spectacularly wrong` the trained mechanic and proven advocate of Dadaism states.